1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic checkin apparatus which can receive air tickets and process a necessary boarding procedure.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The conventional checkin procedure in airports is as follows: A passenger presents an air ticket at a checkin counter and receives a boarding card in which a flight number and a seat number are written or printed. In this moment, a counter clerk enters through keys data recorded on the received air ticket into a terminal device in order to transmit the data to a host computer and receive a seat reservation.
The passenger next checks his baggage at a baggage counter and receives a half of a tag on which a destination is written or printed as an exchange ticket. That is, a baggage clerk writes necessary contents on a tag by hand and cuts off the half of the tag to hand it to the passenger. The tag is attached to the baggage via a string.
As described above, since the conventional passenger checkin and baggage check work are effected by clerks, there exist problems in that it takes much processing time and therefore the counter is crowded when the number of passengers increases. In other words, a large number of clerks should be stationed at the checkin counters. Further, there exists another problem in that errors may be produced when data are inputted via keys or written by hand.
In particular, at the baggage counter, since the work of writing data on a tag and attaching the tag to a piece of baggage is effected by hand, the efficiency is poor and thus the counter is crowded.
In addition, since the passenger must carry a number of tag stubs corresponding to the number of bags, there exists a possibility of losing them.